Wednesday, January 13, 2010

Updating this ILB entry from yesterday, Jan. 12, 2010, Tony Mauro of The National Law Review has now written an overview of the dispute, with links to the documents. The heading: "Top 9th Circuit Judge, Judicial Conference Tangle Over Video at Proposition 8 Trial ."

[Updated at 5:30 PM] Well, the news is not good if you favor public access to the courts.

Lyle Denniston has this entry, posted within the half-hour, headed "Prop 8 Court TV blocked: TV ban may outlast the trial." It begins:

Splitting 5-4, the Supreme Court on Wednesday blocked any television broadcast to the general public of the San Francisco federal court challenge to California’s ban on same-sex marriage. The stay will remain in effect until the Court rules on a coming appeal challenging the TV order. The Court, chastizing the trial court for attempting “to change its rules at the eleventh hour,” issued an unsigned 17-page opinion. The ruling came out nearly 40 minutes after an earlier temporary order blocking TV had technically expired. * * *

The Court’s main opinion opened with a display of pique at the trial judge and the Ninth Circuit Court for moving to allow TV broadcasts of the hotly controversial trial.

Justice Stephen Breyer dissented, joined by Justices John Paul Stevens, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and Sonia Sotomayor. "The public interest weighs in favor of providing access to the courts," wrote Breyer. This post will be updated soon with more details.

[Updated 1/14/10]See this from the WSJ Law Blog, including this quote from the dissent in the SCOTUS opinion denying broadcast of a video feed of the Prop. 8 trial to a handful of other federal courts:

It is particularly inadvisable for this Court to consider this kind of question because it involves local rules and local judicial administration. Here, for example, the Court decides just how a district court should modify its own local rules; in a word, this Court micromanages district court administrative procedures in the most detailed way.